I wonder what a President that condones and uses such behaviour for his advantage has to do with this?
Hate crimes in the United States rose to their highest level in more than a decade last year, while more murders motivated by hate were recorded than ever before, the F.B.I. said on Monday.
The sharp rise in homicides driven by hatred — there were 51 last year, according to the F.B.I. — was attributed in large part to the mass shooting in El Paso in August 2019. In that shooting, the authorities say a 21-year-old gunman motivated by hatred toward Latinos stormed a Walmart and killed 23 people and injured many more.
The death toll in the El Paso attack more than doubled that of 2018’s deadliest hate-motivated crime, the mass shooting targeting Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Over all, the F.B.I. collected data on 7,314 criminal incidents motivated by bias toward race or ethnicity or gender identity in 2019. It was the third straight year the metric surpassed 7,100 incidents and it was the highest number since the F.B.I. reported 7,783 incidents in 2008. Experts say the F.B.I. data likely undercounts the number of hate crimes in America, both because many victims fail to report incidents and local agencies are not required to report hate crime data to the F.B.I….
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and the harsh rhetoric against Latino immigrants was seen as motivating the gunman in the El Paso shooting.
“Politics plays a role,” said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and the director of the university’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism….